Rabbis: Observations of 100 Leading and Influential Rabbis of the 21st Century »

Rabbis is an extraordinary book about modern Judaism. It features portraits of rabbis and essays in their own words. Spanning the globe and the ideological spectrum, this book portrays today's Jewish leaders, and Judaism itself, in its diversity and dimensions. Keepers of the flame of Judaism, these are people who are working in the twenty-first century but are deeply aware of their religious legacy.

The people here represent the rabbinate as the hard-to-define, impossible-to-categorize world that it is. Included are rabbis who are fixtures on talk shows, serious authors, scholars, the first woman rabbi, and the first Ethiopian rabbi. Their stories, in terms of their coming to grips with their spirituality and their Judaism, are brilliantly articulated, filling the book with inspirational messages and spiritual guidance for people of all faiths.

Author Biography: George Kalinsky has been the official photographer at Madison Square Garden for more than thirty years, as well as for The Alvin Ailey Dance Company. He is also a special photographer for the New York Mets. He has authored seven books, and his photos have appeared in numerous publications.

Michael Kress edited the rabbis' personal essays. A graduate of Yale and of Harvard Divinity School, his writing on religion and spirituality has appeared in many prestigous newspapers around the world. He is the editor in chief of MyJewishLearning.com, a Jewish educational Web site, and the former editor at Beliefnet.com, a multi-faith Web site.

Milton Glaser has been a seminal figure in graphic design for over fifty years, originally as a founder of Pushpin Studio and in recent years as the head of the multidisciplinary design firm, Milton Glaser, Inc. His recent book on design is Art Is Work.

Publishers Weekly

There is, it seems, no shortage of rabbis who do the unexpected, and Kalinsky, official photographer at Madison Square Garden, has gathered 100, presenting their portraits and short first-person essays. Rabbis in cowboy boots, rabbis in fatigues, rabbis on cell phones, gay rabbis, rabbis who eat sushi. A Los Angeles rabbi's shirt reads "Grateful Yid," while another, from Rome, saddles-up on a motorcycle. If the premise is hokey, the essays often are not. While a high percentage here write from Long Island, Marvin Tokayer, the former Chief Rabbi of Japan, writes of his encounter with a Japanese man who revealed his self-taught mastery of Yiddish-despite never having heard it spoken. The two kibitzed a night away, exchanging cultural knowledge. Senator Joe Lieberman declares in his introduction to the book, "Beneath the differences lies an even more profound unity..." And in a "Fiddler" moment, Kirk Douglas in his foreword, calls what these rabbis do "tradition." While there's some schmaltz here, there's also a challenge to bland stereotyping. (Oct.) Copyright 2003 Cahners Business Information.